


But Frozen Things, They All Unfreeze

by Lauralot



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Blood and Gore, Dark, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, HYDRA Trash Party, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 14:26:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3293720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauralot/pseuds/Lauralot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What’s the point in owning something beautiful if you’re only going to keep it locked away?</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Frozen Things, They All Unfreeze

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by [this ask on Tumblr](http://lauralot89.tumblr.com/post/109807129206/okay-but-you-should-write-a-fic-with-bucky-and), which was in turn inspired by [this artwork.](http://someterrible.tumblr.com/post/84082978885/original-image-at-the-following-url-here)

Barnes sinks into the bath, staining the water pink with Romanova’s blood.

Evidently, it hadn’t been a clean execution. Pierce had expected no less when he sent his first Soldier after the famed Black Widow, a thorn in HYDRA’s side even after the launch of Insight. Barnes has yet to deliver a mission report, but there’s hardly a need for one: all the blood mingling with the water speaks for itself.

“She survived you once,” Pierce had murmured to Barnes as he stood, letting the technicians dress him for the mission. There was never much in the Soldier’s face after he woke save for tension from the cold, but the slackening of his lips then had been almost comical. Pierce neglected to mention that Romanova had not been the target when the Soldier’s bullet failed to take her life. Why offer reassurance when the fear of being a failure was such a lovely motivator? “Do not disappoint me a second time. I’ve giving you the chance to be good again.”

Barnes had mouthed his thanks, voice still frozen, eyes drowning with gratitude.

Now, carefully reclining against the porcelain of the bath, Barnes’s eyes are blank. The mask is still strapped around his face. Incrementally, the tension is lessening from his shoulders, the metal arm dangling over the edge of the tub. He resembles a science fiction version of a Jacques-Louis David that way, and on the other side of the two-way mirror, Pierce makes a note to get around to updating his art collection. He has all the time in the world now, after all.

After his wife’s death, when his daughter stopped visiting and eventually stopped calling, Pierce had made a number of modifications to this summer home. The two way mirrors were one such addition. This one attaches to the guest bath and Pierce’s own _en suite_ , and he leans back against the marble countertop, watching Barnes slip into the water. Every room in the house contains a mirror, some ordinary and some two-way glass. It’s a game: his pets aren’t allowed in half of the rooms, and so they never know for certain which mirrors their master might be using to watch.

The Winter Soldier, when Pierce allows him to retain any reasoning beyond what’s mission critical, will let his eyes flicker toward the glass, wary glances barely amounting to a second. A God-fearing child who can’t remember his sins clearly enough to beg for forgiveness. The Summer Soldier, well, Pierce isn’t sure he knows what a mirror is. Not anymore.

Barnes permits himself a moment’s rest before his gaze darts toward the mirror and he begins to scrub the blood still clinging to his skin. It lifts away as the metal fingers scour at his flesh, revealing swathes of pretty white skin with deep purple bruises in its place.

When Pierce was a child, his grandmother had a set of china, white with indigo flowers. Whenever her grandchildren visited, she’d set the table up with china and crystal glasses and far more forks and spoons than their little lunches ever required. For her princes and princesses, she’d said.

“Oh, Mom!” his mother gasped one day when she stayed for lunch. “You can’t let the kids use those, they’ll break them!”

“Honey,” his grandmother had said. “What’s the point in owning something beautiful if you’re only going to keep it locked away?”

And that had been the end of the argument.

A door slams and Barnes draws his shoulders back.

Rogers is only ever quiet when the mission requires it.

Pierce doesn’t stir. There are footsteps coming up the hall, heavy and _wet_. There’s no question, then, that Stark’s been disposed of.

Dismembered, judging by the amount of blood and viscera dripping off of Rogers when he storms into the guest bath. He’s limping only a little. At least if he tore Stark’s head off, he didn’t bring it with him. Rogers used to be worse than a housecat before Pierce taught him better, dragging the most intact bits of his kills back to the base. No one was ever sure if he intended them as gifts or threats. It didn’t matter. Whatever a dog’s intent, it recognizes punishment when its face is shoved back in its own mess. Pull the collar a little tighter, leave the dishes empty, and even the most willful pet will learn.

Rogers is staring down at Barnes, breaths heaving, teeth bared. It’s hard to tell, as there’s blood coating his body and Pierce is only seeing his profile, but he holds himself as though he’s injured. Certainly exhausted. And Barnes is the one in that warm, pink bathwater. Rogers won’t stand for it.

Barnes growls softly behind the mask. Generally, he’s the less aggressive of the two, the one closer to a human. Rogers is the one whose mind is burnt down to the smoldering embers. It’s a necessity: Pierce has seen what’s left of the bodies whenever they try and leave their Summer Soldier with even a vestige of personhood.

But Barnes isn’t always so docile. Rogers is, after all, the reason the Winter Soldier is kept muzzled.

Rogers moves closer, towering over Barnes. Pierce can no longer see his eyes, but he knows the man is staring.

Barnes stares back, his eyes so blue and so dead. He’s still growling, body taut. He stares for a long time.

Then Rogers snaps his teeth and it’s over. Barnes darts his eyes away so quickly Pierce can’t help but smile into his whiskey. If the Winter Soldier were a dog, his ears would be drawn back. He shrinks in on himself, head tilted to display his throat, drawing his legs to his chest. He’s making room for Rogers. Perfect submission.

That’s always been Pierce’s favorite thing about HYDRA’s oldest soldier.

Rogers isn’t placated, bending down and grabbing hold of the metal arm in one smooth motion. He tears Barnes from the water, snapping again, this time at Barnes’s throat. His teeth don’t touch, of course—in whatever singed wreck of a mind he has left, he knows how unpleasant his life would become were he to ruin Pierce’s sweetest toy—but his message is clear. Barnes slips on the tile, falls to his knees with his hair lank and wet in his face, but by then Rogers has forgotten him, hauling his own body into the warmth of the bath. He doesn’t even undress, sending water sloshing to the floor in his carelessness.

He’ll have to be punished for that. But for now, simply watching is far too fun to pause for discipline.

Barnes stands, taking a bathrobe from the towel rack. He moves to the bathmat as he puts it on, to keep from dripping onto the floor. His eyes are downcast. The robe is a deep blue that suits him, and is just bordering on impractically short.

Rogers takes a deep breath and plunges his whole body below the water. Only then does Barnes risk a look at him.

Pierce can’t see Barnes’s face, but he imagines the expression there is not unlike the first time the soldiers were reunited. It was a June day, decades ago now. They’d found Rogers in the ice and Pierce, delighted, had brought Barnes to see him.

Barnes, his blank face marred only by the crease between his eyebrows, had stared dutifully at the sleeping body before regarding Pierce. “He is frozen.”

“Yes,” Pierce had said, his smile so wide that he ached with it. “Just like you. Isn’t that fitting?”

For a long while, Barnes had not spoken. Then: “Is he being punished?”

“Repurposed,” Pierce had corrected. “Reformed. You’ll be our Winter Soldier and he’ll be our Summer Soldier, you see?” Summer soldier. A fitting title for the man who’d thrown the world into chaos and disappeared into the Arctic without ever repairing the fallout. And a fitting hell he’d wake to. “Don’t you like him?”

Barnes only stood quietly. Eventually there was a spark of something like life in his eyes, and he’d reached out to touch the sleeping form, but Pierce had ordered him back into cryostasis.

He stands quietly now. Rogers stays below the water for four minutes, not even close to his maximum endurance—Pierce would know, he’s tested it—before he bolts upright with another splash and staggering breath. Barnes shuffles back and ends up sitting on the bathmat.

The Summer Soldier stares at him. Without all the gore coating it, his face is even paler than the hair shorn close to his scalp, rough and uneven. Pierce has tried to let that hair grow soft and long and lovely like the Winter Soldier’s, but Rogers will take his own knives to it as soon as it hints at itching against his face. The Summer Soldier has a black eye and a bruised, split cheekbone. He stares at the Winter Soldier with an expression that befits a man, not a feral dog. Gently, he lifts his hand from the lip of the tub, as if to reach out.

That’s when Pierce moves.

The serum that flows through both of their bodies ensures that they hear him well before he leaves his own bathroom. From the corner of his eye, he can see them snap to attention, forgetting each other as they stare at the door.

Rogers is scrambling out of the water as Pierce arrives, weighed down by his drenched and dripping tac-gear. Pierce raises a hand to still him. He has no interest in being soaked and stained by an overly excited pet. Not in this suit. “Look at the mess you’ve made,” he says coldly. There’s a fire in Rogers’s eyes and Pierce doesn’t flinch at it. He only lets his lip curl and smirks internally as Rogers doesn’t move. “Take your clothes off and wipe that up. You know better.”

He leaves Rogers to strip, turning his focus to Barnes. “You’re my good boy, aren’t you?” he asks, and Barnes glows as if he’s heard the voice of God. “Come to me.”

The Winter Soldier burrows against his side. His head tilts as though he wants to rest it against Pierce’s shoulder, but fears soiling his master’s clothing with his still damp hair. Behind him, Rogers is naked, kneeling on the floor, wiping up the water he’s spilled.

It’s intoxicating.

Rogers leaves the wet towels on the bathmat, straightening. His eyes fall to Barnes first, and the look within them is purely murderous. He would kill what was once his dearest friend without a second’s hesitation, Pierce knows, if only he received the order. Take out the competition and smile while he did it.

Barnes wouldn’t hesitate either, but nor would he smile. There’s a beautiful fragility in HYDRA’s first soldier that Pierce can coax out now that Insight’s won them the world.

Pierce intends to spend every available moment of his remaining years basking in the spoils of his victory, and there are no finer prizes to be enjoyed than HYDRA’s two soldiers. Once he’s gone, they’ll be put down, their services no longer needed and their beauty slipping away with the time. They ought to be grateful for this respite, if they can remember gratitude.

Then Rogers looks right at Pierce, who only smiles and raises the whiskey to his mouth again. Rogers will never look away. But he’ll never attack, either. It’s dizzying, and Pierce nearly has to clutch the Winter Soldier for support as he rides the wave of his own power. “Dress yourself,” he orders, and Rogers pulls on an identical robe without breaking eye contact.

With a sigh, Pierce sets his glass on the sink, untangling himself from Barnes. “Come here.”

The Winter Soldier does not whimper at the loss of contact. He’s too well-behaved for that. But his breath is loud and shivering.

Rogers doesn’t try to wind himself around Pierce. He wouldn’t have been allowed the contact had he made the move. Pierce places a hand on Rogers’s bruised cheek with a sympathetic, wordless murmur. “You’ve tried to be good, haven’t you? Whatever’s left of you in there?” Rogers had been fiercely loyal to all the wrong causes, certainly, but fiercely loyal nonetheless. For all his misbehaviors since his reprogramming, his devotion’s never been in question. “Did you hurt yourself?” Pierce asks, brushing his thumb down the scrape on Rogers’s face.

There isn’t any answer. Pierce hadn’t expected one.

“Did you hurt yourself?” he repeats, digging the nail in.

Blood drips down Rogers’s cheek, his lips tensing, but it isn’t Rogers that Pierce is watching now. It’s Barnes.

Steve Rogers stands bleeding before James Barnes, and all Barnes is looking at is Alexander Pierce. Rogers is breathing quickly and shallowly now, and Barnes hasn’t blinked. Pierce is so delighted he could die of it.

He withdraws his hand. If he’d really wanted, he could have gouged straight to the bone and Rogers would have taken it. Barnes would stand there with that mix of need, jealousy, and worry on his perfect pale face. “Here.” Pierce retrieves the whiskey glass and presses it to Rogers’s bruising. There’s no ice within—he wouldn’t water down the alcohol—but there is frozen soapstone. Maybe once the bleeding’s stopped, he’ll let Rogers have a sip.

A loyal pet deserves the occasional treat.

“Follow me,” he tells the both of them, turning as he steps into the hall.

Rogers is the first of the two to work out that Pierce is leading them toward the living room. Specifically, to the black leather De Sede sofa along the west wall. He lengthens his stride to ensure he beats Barnes there, clambering onto the leftmost cushion.

That way, when Pierce sits in the middle, Barnes will end up on the right. That way, it will be Barnes’s cold metal prosthetic up against Pierce’s body. That way, Rogers will be the most comfortable.

Pierce can’t help but laugh aloud.

“I didn’t tell you to sit,” he says, but there’s no apology in Rogers’s stare.

Shaking his head, Pierce settles down, patting the cushion to his side until Barnes follows suit. He frees the mask from Barnes’s face and a little water drips free as the man gasps for air that didn’t filter through wet plastic pressed against his skin. Pierce discards the mask onto the carpet. It’s not clean, but Rogers has dripped blood throughout the house. The rugs will have to be replaced.

Pierce lays his arms over their bodies and they shut their eyes, heads resting against his thighs. “You’re so good,” he tells the pair of them, and each soldier draws closer. Pierce leans down, pressing a kiss to both of his pets’ hair. They smell of copper and bath salts.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says, “and now I’ll never lock you away again.”

They look up at that, the both of them. Their eyes are big and flat, like dolls’. But for once, they’re not full of wariness or bloodlust. For once, they’re full of comfort and contentment that could almost pass as love.

**Author's Note:**

> The story title is a lyric from the Chairlift song [Bruises.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ9hLOHj8ag)
> 
> The painting that Bucky reminds Pierce of is [The Death of Marat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Marat), by Jacques-Louis David.
> 
> The Summer Soldier is a reference to Thomas Paine's [The American Crisis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Crisis): "These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman."
> 
> There are reusable ice cubes made of sanded soapstone.


End file.
